“When there’s unique global content coming in … that’s conducive to bringing new users onto the platform,” Costolo said, in conversation with Kara Swisher at the inaugural Code Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif. “That’s one of the axes that we’re investing in to continue to drive growth.”

Quoted:

“I think about that growth in the context of those concentric sets of audience.”

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo on expanding the company’s user base.

That description is a little murky, but picture this: Ellen DeGeneres takes an Oscar-night selfie with a bunch of celebrities and posts it to Twitter. It gets picked up by virtually every major media site, all of which embed the tweet onto their Web pages. And that exposes Twitter to tons of new people who may not use the service.

That’s good for Twitter, and it’s good for celebrities like Ryan Seacrest, whose tweets also regularly appear embedded in websites.